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Who do you think invents these things (the French)
Who do you think invents these things (the French)
I can't answer that without a correctly positioned question mark.
The Swiss appear to have been the ealy adopters, but I could see the French selling the crap wine with screw caps and markeing it, successfully, to the less discerning palate.
^^ basically what Graham says with the caveat that plenty of £30-50 NZ and Aussie wines come with a screw top. My wife was horrief when I bought 3 reds from wine society for £100 in total and they all had screw tops. We probably buy 200-300 bottles a year and the vast majority are cork sealed
Wow, you have such a massive e-peen.
Wow, you have such a massive e-peen.
Yeah, but after 300 bottles of wine I doubt it works properly.
The best wine money could buy was (IMO) proper nasty
That's the best [i]Beaujolais nouveau[/i] money can buy. Which is all proper nasty.
Newly bought expensive wine with cork: probably meant to be cellared for (at least) a few years before being drunk.
The whole point of Beaujolais nouveau is that you buy it and drink it on the same day. In 5 years living in France I met one person who actually enjoyed the stuff, everyone else just did it because it was a tradition and an excuse to get pissed at work on a Thursday in November. It's a bit like people who don't like turkey still eating it at Christmas.
I was also told by an ex that a big indent for your thumb was a sign of quality.
Don't tell Louis Roederer!
I don't do New World Wines either.
Your loss.
GrahamS - Member
deep punt is just a sign of an expensive bottle. And winemakers don't, generally, put crap wine in expensive bottles
I always wondered if thre was any reasoning behind that.
I prefer to have a cork because opening wine with a corksrew gives me more pleasure, in the same way i used a bottle opener on screw top beer bottles (well that and i forget they are screwtop).
Although for home alone drinking I normally buy wine in Sainsos based on the biggest discount I can find to give me a price of around £7 😳 ...by and large they taste fine
And buy as big a percentage of the years stock at once on the fist day of availability if you are a certain type of womanThe whole point of Beaujolais nouveau is that you buy it and drink it on the same day
[quote=jimoiseau ]The whole point of Beaujolais nouveau is that you buy it and drink it on the same day. In 5 years living in France I met one person who actually enjoyed the stuff, everyone else just did it because it was a tradition and an excuse to get pissed at work on a Thursday in November.
I thought they sent it all to us, because they had more sense and there are more gullible wine snobs here?
I bought a bottle of Rustenburg that has a screw top and it says it will improve with age up to 10 years from the bottling date (5 years from now)
John X Merriman by any chance? I had forgotten (until lsat night and bridge 😉 ) that this came with a screw top. Very handy.
I took some clients to Rustenburg and they tried to charge us 4x the price of Majestic for the stuff. 😯
Pure snobbery. Though pulling a cork gives you a better feeling and maybe there's some perceived quality based on you believing it's better, but it's balls really.
In my experience the main quality difference in wines (and I'm no expert) is based on price. Always been in the sub £10 category myself but with £20 to £40+ wines I'm pretty blown away. 99% of that is down to the quality of the content. 1% could be the top, don't know as only have pricey stuff in restaurants and they always do corks so the waiter can do their act (preferably without a Campagnolo which is not the done thing with posh stuff 😉 ). Wouldn't be surprised if some stuff comes screw top and they pop a cork in it just to be seen pulling the cork out. Which of course you have to sniff even though most, including myself, wouldn't have a clue what they're doing.
Price is most likely related to age though and age is really the quality factory. Cheap supermarket stuff is often a year or two at the most old, but the odd discounted stuff that's from 2009 of obscure origin I find is way better than fresh. Cork or screw top.
We probably buy 200-300 bottles a year and the vast majority are cork sealed
Oooft, 5 bottles a week 😀
Which of course you have to sniff even though most, including myself, wouldn't have a clue what they're doing.
You're just supposed to be checking that it is not corked. Smell the wine in the glass. If it smells like wine, all good, if it smells like a musty wet brown paper bag then it is corked. Simples.
Wouldn't be surprised if some stuff comes screw top and they pop a cork in it just to be seen pulling the cork out.
Check the colour, it's not hard to tell if the cork is new or not.
Oooft, 5 bottles a week
That explains a lot. 😀
There are other, infinately more pretentious ways to open a bottle, you know
Blind test is the only way to tell. Buy 4 or 5 bottles of random seal and get drinking. I thought natural cork was best until recently proved wrong. A lot of our cheap plonk is delivered to the UK in flexitanks and bottled here which makes commercial sense and is greener but it certainly excludes the artisan wines and cork suppliers of business.
The majority of nouveau is made by Georges Duboeuf and it's crap, but if you get an independent then it can be good.
KiwiJohn - genuine question, is the proportion of cork taint as high as 1 in 8? I know many wouldn't spot it and it can be less pronounced but that seems high
It can Ed. Some people are more sensitive to it than others. We had 8 grand cru burgundies, top shelf stuff & 1 was corked. Winemakers can be very picky & tend to argue a lot.
Cork is the main source of TCA, but old barrels can be infected with it. Some wineries in California have had huge issues with it (Gallo).
You're just supposed to be checking that it is not corked. Smell the wine in the glass. If it smells like wine, all good, if it smells like a musty wet brown paper bag then it is corked. Simples.
What does wine smell like? A good burgundy smells of rotten vegetables. Maybe not so simple.